Biology at Amherst College

A $27,000 debt load paired with first-year earnings around $42,000 sounds reasonable on paper—that 0.64 debt-to-earnings ratio is well within manageable territory. But here's what matters for Amherst: these figures are pulled from medians across other Massachusetts biology programs, and given this college's 10% admission rate and 1494 average SAT, its graduates likely outperform these estimates significantly. The challenge is we simply don't know by how much because the DOE suppresses the actual data when graduate cohorts are small.

What we do know is instructive. Top biology programs in Massachusetts are producing first-year earnings in the $46,000-$52,000 range—substantially above the state median used for this estimate. Amherst's academic selectivity and network typically command similar or better outcomes. The debt estimate, drawn from comparable private colleges in Massachusetts, is probably more reliable since institutional aid packages tend to cluster by school type.

The real question isn't whether Amherst biology graduates do better than the $42,000 estimate suggests—they almost certainly do. It's whether the premium justifies the investment when stronger public options like UMass-Lowell are producing $46,500+ outcomes, likely with less debt. For families paying full freight at Amherst, the long-term value lies in the institution's broader advantages, not the biology major itself.